Assassins Creed III is featured in North America during the Revolutionary War. The game still features the Templars, who are in both the British and American armies. Ubisoft has seriously improved the look and feel of the game over the previous entries in the series. The demo that was shown was a part where the main character, Connor, was at the fight of Bunker Hill in 1775.
Ubisoft has made a lot of changes from Revelations and Brotherhood. One major change they made was how many people they can fit onto the screen at one time. Before this major change they could only fit about five hundred NPCs on the screen at once, but now they can have up to 2500 NPCs without any performance issues. Another really cool change that Ubisoft made was the additional weapons. One weapon they added that is not really new, but altered, is the pistol. The pistol is not connected to any part of your armour and is its own weapon now. A new weapon that was never before seen is the musket and bayonet that the British and the American troops use in battle. The musket and bayonet is what it sounds like, a musket with a type of sword that is attachable to the end of the musket so that the troops can stab each other when they run out of ammo. Another brand new weapon that is being featured are the bow and arrow. Thats right, a bow and fucking arrow. By using a well placed rope dart, the player can hook and then hang a enemy from a higher vantage point, such as a tree.
The developers wanted a new gameplay system, rebuilding the game mechanics from the ground up. The first thing that was mentioned was that they have new movement format. No worries, the general controls are still the same. The first new movement format that was pointed out in the demo was that in every mission that you take there are multiple paths you can choose. Some paths are the action path, which allows you to see a lot more action and combat then you would normally see. The other paths are more stealthy, allowing you to traverse the woods around all the fighting.
During the fights, the animations for the reactions are a lot better and look more realistic, like when cannonballs hit the living or the dead. When a character gets hit, they fly out of the field of view to land somewhere behind the player. Also There are new climbing objects… TREES… finally something that we can climb in game and in real life. Finally Ubisoft made trees climbable, and with that they made it feel like you were actually climbing a tree. They made it so that you can move around a tree like a boss, and gave the trees a more realistic, branching appearance.
Another thing Ubisoft did was to study real rock climbers and build the rock climbing animation based off of what they learned.
As this is a war, the game incorporates real battle mechanics and tactics from the time period. One of the other things they added to make it more realistic was that the British have firing lines like they did in actual battle, and the American troops were more spread out and sparse.
Your character can now hold dual weapons. This means more action with more weapons! You can now charge an enemy and kill him with your blades or if you have your baynet out then you stab him with it. Enemies can also be used as personal human shields. In one of the scenes that is showed you climb a tree and then attack a red coat from the tree by hanging him with your grapple hook, then the character took one of the red coats and used him to block the shots from a quickly-formed red coat firing line.
Another thing that the developers have added is being able to stalk your prey. You can use bushes and other land items to stalk your target. These areas are called “stalking zones”. To stalk your prey you have to move slow and keep to cover. In the past the running assassination you lose your momentum when you kill someone, but now when you do a running assassination you don’t lose your momentum and you keep on moving. This is great when you want to hit a group and keep moving. When you do a running assassination your motion is maintained so that you don’t slow down and lose your momentum.
This game looks good and I wish I could have gotten my hands on it. The game is coming out October 30th worldwide, stay tuned for more information until then.